Is Greece about to create another Euro crisis? For such a small country, accounting for less than 2 per cent of the eurozone’s GDP, Greece certainly has the ability to cause huge upsets.

We saw that vividly earlier this month when global markets fell on December 9 on fears of a world slowdown, uncertainties about the impact of a collapsing oil price and worries about the eurozone, the Greek stock market was among the worst performers, falling 11 per cent in one day, the sharpest for 27 years.

And it carried on declining when others were beginning to recover, ending that week 20 per cent lower.

Trouble ahead? Prime Minister Antonis Samaras had previously staked his reputation on being able to exit the bail-out conditions by the end of 2014

One of the sectors worst hit was banking, which had just scraped through the ECB’s stress test though three of the four main banks failed the central bank’s ‘static’ tests and loan provisions needed strengthening.

And yet Greece has been recovering thanks to record tourist receipts and the deficit has come down faster than in many other crisis hit countries from 15 per cent in 2009 to an expected 3 per cent in 2014.

Greece is now achieving a primary surplus if interest payments on its €250billion (£195billion) debt are excluded.

Last summer Greece managed once again to tap the private markets for funds.

But sentiment has recently been affected by renewed political and economic uncertainty.

Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, of the leading coalition party the centre right New Democracy, had staked his reputation on being able to exit the bail-out conditions by the end of 2014, earlier than intended, following in the footsteps of Ireland and Portugal which had done so the previous year.

But he was frustrated by the Eurogroup in Brussels pushing back the date for agreement on the 2015 Greek budget by two months.

Failure to achieve a deal was a blow for Samaras and he has gambled that he can neutralise his main radical left opposition party Syriza by calling snap elections for the President of the Republic. This is tantamount to a vote of confidence.

If he fails to get his candidate in after today’s final vote, then early general elections may be called. The first round held on December 17 did not go Samaras’ way.

Turbulent: A parliament member of the Syriza party scuffles with police as he tries to pass from a block near ERT's headquarters in the northern Athens suburb of Agia Paraskevi

Over that weekend accusations started flying of New Democracy allegedly trying to bribe an MP from the Independent Greeks party to vote for Stavros Dimas, the current coalition’s candidate in advance of the second vote on December 23.

Dimas failed again to secure sufficient votes meaning a third and final vote will take place today and the stakes are high.

At present if Samaras fails to get his man through and elections follow, Syriza, under its charismatic leader, Alexis Tsipras, looks the favourite to win.

They want to renegotiate Greece’s unsustainable level of debt and to spend a lot of money re-nationalising parts of the economy, restoring wages and re-employ sacked public sector workers.

That worries the markets.

Default could follow, and even exit from the euro with the wider repercussions this may have.

Yields on three-year Greek bonds jumped to nearly 9 per cent.

Greece is therefore once again shut out of capital markets and can’t exit the bailout programme with any credibility.

Downward spiral? 'Arguably Greece is just a symptom of this malaise and its current problems exemplify what is wrong with the Eurozone as a whole', Vicky Pryce says

But of course this isn’t just about Greece. The Eurozone’s problems stem from a poor institutional framework not adept at dealing with crises.

Arguably Greece is just a symptom of this malaise and its current problems exemplify what is wrong with the Eurozone as a whole.

The worry for the markets is that if Greece is once again plunged into a crisis that could spread elsewhere.

Eurozone growth is being constantly revised downwards, Italy is back in recession and countries like Ireland and Portugal are nursing debt to GDP ratios of some 120 per cent and 140 per cent respectively.

Greece’s – at 170 per cent – is not that much higher. Italy’s is above 130 per cent.

All are unsustainable at current rates of growth, made worse by countries like Greece having sunk into deflation.

If the stakes are high for Greece, they seem to be just as high for the euro as a whole.

Vicky Pryce is chief economic adviser at CEBR and author of Greekonomics.